Cassandra Wilson traversed this world for seven magical decades. The news of her passing reached me while seated in the shade on the very hot dusk at the Chicago Jazz Festival, before her sister in jazz, Dee Dee Bridgewater closed the first night. I wrote the brief reflection on the tribute screen off, as if I must have seen wrong. I did something similar when I first heard her on the “Love Jones” soundtrack in 1997. I figured she was from days before my time and had come and gone.
A few years later, in a Colorado library, I picked up a CD with an image of a woman photographed in a Miles Davis pose, as if in a Gil Evans collaboration, Traveling Miles. Once I heard her “Run the Voodoo Down,” it was clear I had to buy my own; it deserved respect because it gave it, entirely. By then, I could learn through new technology, the internet: she was alive. I was wrong and overwhelmed with delight. I heard her live soon after, during her “Belly of the Sun” tour in Denver. I bought every CD from Blue Light ‘til Dawn to Coming Forth by Day.
Wilson’s work was a transformation and stylistic interpretation of sepia-hued notes, leaning into lyrics likened to Anita Baker, and what Toni Morrison pinned in the multi-awarded novel Beloved, before there was language: “the sound that broke the back of words.” Cassandra Wilson found the places underneath words, where meaning is as layered as life. Taking a song from the past and reimagining it, she did, to liberate it into a cosmos vivid and in full range. Her original works are no less tantalizing. Always pushing, moving forward, exploring eclectic blends of genres conjured into what Maya Angelou called “kindled into delicious color.”
Wison’s cover of Cyndi Lauper and Rob Hyman’s “Time After Time” is featured exquisitely in movie soundtracks for “Brown Sugar” and “Good Deeds”. I relished her cameos in film and TV productions, from the theme song of “True Detective” to a brief appearance in “Treme”. Her “Death Letter” for season three of “True Detective” hits to the core like Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman”. She collaborated with a lush range of artists, including India Arie, Prince, Luther Vandross, Meshell Ndegeocello to the Pulitzer Prize-winning creation with Wynton Marsalis’s Blood on the Fields. Her creative genius earned her multiple awards, including Grammys and the NEA Jazz Master. She was a griot in the sacred world of music. A defining pioneer and positive influence then and forever. She threw it all away, as one of her muses, Abbey Lincoln wrote and sang:
“You can throw it away
Give your love, live your life
Each and every day
And keep your hand wide open
And let the sun shine through
‘Cause you can never lose a thing
If it belongs to you”
I was thinking of doing an album cover for her, one of my collage works. The night had come; Chicago celebrated Third World Press’s 50th anniversary, with founder Haki Madhubuti, with the culminating headliner evening dinner and performance with Cassandra Wilson. Paying the bill, as if purchasing all her CDs in my collection again, with no fuss, I saw her at the edge of the stage of the Parkway Ballroom. I love food but I don’t recall the meal, overwhelmed by the encounter. I remember “In The Belly of Jesus” was among the known-but-refreshed numbers that evening.
“Round Midnight,” I was welcomed to enter her company, and as if floating, we talked, laughed and then I shared the sleeve cover of the first CD I had and the last program booklet of hers to sign. In a calm and clear first response, she noted, “now you know I don’t do autographs.” I replied, truthfully, “but my birthday is in a few minutes.” “Now you didn’t tell me that,” Wilson replied, as she retrieved the silver sharpie and signed them both. We parted as her sister friend, grand dame of Black literature, Sonya Sanchez entered the room. Those signatures take up wonderful space on my wall of respect next to Dianne Reeves, Angelique Kidjo, Lizz Wright and Terri Lynn Carington, among others.
Now her “Red Guitar” is being played in “blue heavens,” humming down the road; I can almost hear her singing Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary.” We shall cherish you eternally. Thank you, CW, for taking those “Seven Steps” so beautifully.
